


And There Shall I Find

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghosts, Gen, Hallucinations, Other, Stranded Together, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 19:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12139806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: After her shuttle crashes on a desolate world, Leia has only one person to keep her company.





	And There Shall I Find

Leia woke up, then wished that she hadn't. Muscles screamed in pain even before she was fully conscious. The acrid fumes rising from the shattered control panel below her threatened to choke her. Her chest ached. Below. The panel was below. Her vision cleared enough to show she was held in place by her seat restraints, dangling over the smashed controls of the shuttle. Turning her head hurt. The pilot hung in her own restraints beside Leia, and the angle of her neck told Leia she'd never have to worry about hurting herself again.

Think! Had they been alone on the shuttle? Had they been pursued? Were they surrounded by foes crunching the surface of this planet under their boots, blasters cocked to fire at any survivors?

Alone. Leia had been alone on the shuttle with her pilot. Stence. Her name was Lieutenant Stence. Had been. They'd been fired upon. A TIE? They'd jumped away to safety but not enough safety, falling out of hyperspace at the first system the failing nav computer spotted. Leia remembered warning beeps, turbulence, and not much else.

She'd wanted to fly this mission herself. Her colleagues had insisted she have someone else with her, and now Stence was dead.

Leia blinked. She realized she'd passed out again, waking to see the blazing light of this world's star shining directly into the shuttlecraft through the broken bulkhead. Stence was in the same position, brushing away Leia's last hope she might have survived. If Leia didn't get out of her seat, she'd be dead soon. For one dark moment, clustered tight with too many losses over her long life, she allowed herself to consider closing her eyes and waiting. She was bleeding. She might have internal injuries. It wouldn't take much more to finish this long, damn misery she'd called her life.

_"Since when do you take the easy way out?"_

Her own conscience had always kept her going forward on every other occasion she'd contemplated death. The words in her head felt strange, not her own.

"Luke? Are you out there? I could really use a pickup right now."

Silence. There had been times she and her twin shared a close rapport, knowing the other's thoughts as easily as their own. Those times were long gone. Luke wasn't coming to rescue her. She'd have to do this on her own.

Leia gauged the distance from where she hung to the fore of the ship, which now served as the deck. Painfully, slowly, and with a lot of swearing, she disengaged the fastenings of her harness, clutching the sides of her seat as she did. The pressure released on her chest, letting her take in a grateful gulp of air that ached with the suggestion of cracked ribs. Her legs hurt but she was almost certain neither had any breaks.

She dropped, catching herself with bent knees, then falling roughly to the ground. New pains made themselves known, and she was no longer sure she didn't have a broken foot or leg.

Leia rested for a while, catching her breath, examining herself as well as she could. Her ankle was tender, a sprain rather than a break. Her left arm bled from an open gouge from something flying by during the crash. She was worried about her ribs but there was nothing she could do there.

She dug out the medikit, finding a roll of bacta tape inside. Patching up her arm took a while. The gouge was deep, and the disinfectant she poured over it stung. A sharp image appeared in her mind: two scraped knees in her childhood, courtesy of a spill from a wall she'd been forbidden from climbing, and her mother applying the same stinging liquid before the bacta patches and the kiss to ease each hurt after. Leia had still been in trouble but that was separate from the clear worry and fear on her mother's face as Leia had run to her, crying and in pain.

 _"You loved her."_ The thought was accompanied by unfamiliar emotions.

Not her conscience, and not Luke. Someone else. Someone who could hear her thoughts, and who was surprised to sense how deeply Leia had loved her mother. Not just surprise. Jealousy?

She calmed herself. She'd been through a terrible crash, she'd lost blood, and she had multiple injuries. Shock was to be expected, even hallucinations. She needed to contact the Resistance and get help as soon as possible before she passed out again. There was a chance her message would be intercepted by the First Order and she'd be caught by them before help arrived. She had to trust to luck.

Leia dragged herself up to her feet, testing her weight on her ankle. Not good but not awful. She managed to pull herself over the control panel and reached the communicator. "Organa to Home One. Mayday. Our shuttle crashed and we need assistance. Mayday."

She read the interference pattern on the damaged screen. The signal wasn't going anywhere.

_"Look outside."_

Leia stepped away to get a look through the cracks in the hull. The ship had crashed at what looked like the bottom of a deep canyon or ravine. As she watched, the planet's sun moved out of sight past the cliff's edge far above her.

Leia swore again.

She gathered supplies. The shuttle sported a basic survival kit with food and water to last two humans for three days. The portable comm would get a better signal from the top of the valley, and if it didn't, she would be dead shortly after her supplies ran out. She stowed the medikit in the same bag as the survival kit, and arranged the strap across her body. Then she rested again, gathering her strength and gazing up at poor Lieutenant Stence. If this planet was inhabited, scavengers would come for her soon, be they large and toothy or tiny and winged.

"If I make it out alive, we'll come back for you," she said aloud, "and if we can't, I'll have them blow the ship. I swear."

With that, she cracked the hatch, relieved there was enough power left to operate the door, and to seal it again with Stence inside. Outside, the air was biting cold, but she'd survived worse, and this one had a breathable atmosphere. The ship had fallen into the crack, smashing along the sides as it fell. This had slowed their descent before the final crash at the bottom, or they would have been nothing but scattered debris at the bottom. The high climb loomed above her in shadows as the eerie sunlight sped up the side of the narrow canyon and away.

_"It's an easier climb further along. You'll have to walk north."_

Leia held very still. "I don't listen to hallucinations. I definitely don't listen to hallucinations who think they know which way north is on a planet I don't know."

_"It's a moon, actually."_

The smug voice grated, but did give her the energy to examine the canyon more critically. One end looked as though the path upwards would be easier. Ankle aching, she set off in that direction. Movement hurt but the exertion kept her warm. The sunlight faded from the very top of the ravine. Night was coming and she had no idea how much colder she could expect to be by midnight. If the rapid movement of the sun was anything to go by, the planet's rotation was swift and would bring day back soon.

_"Moon."_

Leia let out a disgusted breath. "I need a better class of hallucinations."

To her annoyance, and some fear, she noticed a bluish glow beside her in the gathering shadows. She refused to look. She'd cracked her head in the crash and lost a lot of blood. If she didn't get to the top and send for help, she'd perish here, babbling to imaginary ghosts.

What felt like an hour or so later, with no help from her broken chronometer, Leia saw the spreading edges of the ravine against the pale starlight. Her lantern didn't reach far. She couldn't make out the slope above a few meters, nor see if there was a visible path. She would have to make camp here and wait for the sunrise.

"Camp" was what heat could be found in the tiny survival kit stove, built with a power source that would outlive her by centuries, and the two thin insulating blankets. Stence ought to be here with her, sharing the warmth. A lot of things ought to be different. Leia shouldn't have accepted this mission.

 _"I can't remember the last time I felt cold."_ The blue was far too clear, sitting beside her by the stove.

"Go away, Vader." She hated addressing the voice in her head by name. She could pretend not to hear him talking to her. Saying his name out loud felt like surrender. She didn't dare close her eyes. If her brain was this addled, she likely had a severe enough concussion that she'd die in her sleep tonight.

 _"I don't respond to that name any longer,"_ he said without reproach. _"Your injury is allowing you to hear me for once. I've been talking to you for years. Luke told you he could hear me sometimes."_

"Luke's gone!" she snapped at him, enjoying for a moment as the figure recoiled from her anger. She hadn't looked at him, hadn't wanted to, and she was momentarily confused. The voice in her mind had made words without benefit of air, or of the heavy breathing apparatus the monster had worn for the last twenty-odd years of his miserable life. She'd still expected the cold, black helmet to stare at her, not this rather young face with a tousel of hair that reminded her so strongly of Luke that she ached.

She turned from him. "Luke ran away. Your poison destroyed Ben. Luke blamed himself and took off. I can't touch his mind. The only reason I know he's still alive is because I know it'll kill me when he dies."

_"He's alive. He doesn't listen to me any longer, if that's any consolation to you."_

"It's not. Go away." Leia sealed the edges of the blanket to keep in her own warmth, turning away from him.

Daylight woke her with a start. The sun was not yet visible. She had enough light to make out the path upwards. She wouldn't have to do as much climbing if she chose her steps with care. As she got to her feet, her ankle throbbed in pain. The medikit had a few precious doses of painkiller but she didn't want to risk the wooziness. Leia gritted her teeth as she packed her blankets and the stove, then started her path upwards.

Each step was a new experience in pain. She'd been all right along the flat bottom of the ravine, washed low by some river long, long ago. Finding her way up was trickier, looking for handholds here and the narrowest of paths to follow there, mindful of her footing with every motion. Should rock give way or crumble beneath her, she'd fall to her death. If she collapsed from pain, she risked the same fate.

She'd survived worse pain than this. The Imperial torture droid she'd encountered on the first Death Star still haunted her dreams on the bad nights. The floating globe always turned to Alderaan and exploded before she managed to wake herself.

Supporting the theory that her unwanted companion was nothing more than her own addled brain, the blue vision chose this moment to reappear. _"I understand you will never accept my apology for that. Any of it."_

"You murdered my family, my friends, everyone."

_"Tarkin did."_

"You stood and watched. You did nothing to stop him. Were you always that much of a craven bootlick, or was that part of the Sith Lord package deal you accepted in exchange for murdering everyone you knew?"

Leia climbed, and her visitor remained silent. Good. She'd wanted to scream at him for years. Maybe this was her dying brain's means of giving herself some closure. From that perspective, she minded his company less although she'd prefer a different companion at the end. The stab of loss paused her movements. For hours at a stretch, she forgot Han was dead, not merely off on another jaunt with Chewie. The reminders shuddered through her, startling her each time.

Vader thought, _"I never understood what you saw in him. By all reports, that smuggler was a worthless criminal."_

She glared at the ghost, maintaining her grip on the rocky cliffside. "Han was a better man than you ever were. If he's there with you now, tell him I said he could punch you for me."

 _"He isn't. I'm surprised I'm still as corporeal as I am. The majority of souls return to the Force, even Jedi. There are few who linger."_ He twitched. _"My former apprentice was happy to take you up on your request."_ The translucent face twitched again and turned away. _"Quit it!"_

Her hallucinations were having hallucinations. Great. If she didn't get medical treatment soon, she'd imagine a ghostly Jedi family surrounding Vader, bickering with one another and berating him for eternity.

She reached a small ledge wide enough for her to sit. She dug out her water and took a long drink, noting the sun already at its zenith. Days moved too quickly here. She'd be in darkness in a few hours, and she was less than a third of the way up the cliff. Above her, she made out the shape of another ledge somewhat larger than this one. She gave herself the goal of reaching it before sunset and she'd reward herself with a painkiller while she waited out the short night.

Two meters further up, her ankle gave. Leia fell against the hillside, squeezing the air from her lungs before she could waste it on a scream. She slid along the rocky surface, grasping with her hands to get purchase. Her chin struck jutting stones. Flesh scraped from her arms.

Her good foot hit an outcropping and stayed. For one moment, she held and shuddered, fearing the jolt of her own accelerating weight would snap the bone or break off the fragile stone. She'd caught herself long enough to see her death coming.

Hot tears rolled down her face, with no one around to witness except her imaginary enemy. Her teeth ached and her mouth tasted of blood. There wasn't an inch of flesh on her body that didn't hurt. 

The stone under her foot held. Light was fading from the sky and would be gone before she had a prayer of reaching the ledge above.

 _"That way,"_ said the hated voice, and Leia turned her head. Five meters to her right and one above, she could see a ledge wide enough for her to sit. It may as well have been lightyears away.

She couldn't see beneath her. She hated this, hated playing games with herself. She did it anyway. "Is there anything below me I can reach?"

_"The ground."_

Leia let out a long, annoyed sigh. "I always wondered where I got the smartass gene." She fixed the closer ledge in her sights. Moving was painful but pain was better than death.

 _"Your mother gave you a good share of that."_ The voice had gone fond.

Anger rolled inside her, thick and energizing, giving her the strength to move closer to her target centimeter by centimeter. This was the reason she'd refused Luke's lessons in the Force after they'd discovered their connection. She wasn't worried about being bad at manipulating the energy she had learned to feel inside herself. She worried about how gifted she'd prove to be. "You don't get to talk about her."

_"She was a remarkable woman. I see her strength in you, and her kindness in your brother. There's so much I could tell you about her. So much I know you've been longing to learn."_

"Not from you." Leia didn't care about the records Luke had found. Secret marriage or not, there was no possibility Padmé Naberrie had joined this monster without him coercing her via the Force. Luke needed to believe their biological parents had been in love. Leia had no use for such illusions.

The scrapes across her body left blood on the rocks as she made her slow way. She expected insects to come, drawn by the scent, but there was nothing. This planet may have had water at one time, but now it was devoid of life.

 _"It's a moon."_ He'd gone sullen. _"She did love me, and I loved her more than the stars."_

"You never loved anyone. You were a creature of pure evil. That's what the dark side is all about." She was so tired. The ledge seemed as far away as when she'd started, and soon the light would be gone again, leaving her in shadow against a cliffside she could not cling to for much longer.

_"It's not. The dark side is temptation. It's the belief that the easy way is the right way, and that desire is sufficient cause for possession. The dark side takes root when there's jealousy, fear, or want of something you can't have by normal means, and anger is its servant and its fuel. I feared your mother's death. I wanted her to live forever, and I was jealous of others who could live openly as a family."_

"And you were angry." This concerned Leia most in her dark hours. In her youth, she'd told herself hers was a righteous rage against the Empire's injustice. The Empire was long gone, and she was still fighting, still angry, and she'd watched that same fury in toddler tantrums and adolescent storms. She'd been jealous of families whose children didn't destroy their bedrooms with telekinesis, jealous especially of the few other families with Force-sensitive children. Ben possessed all the power she'd never used, and all the anger she always had directed at her cause. Leia had feared what was to come.

The ledge looked a little closer now. If she kept up this pace, she wouldn't be long past sunset when she reached it. Her hand slipped and she scrabbled until she found another handhold.

_"I can't catch you if you fall. I have no power."_

"I'd never forgive you if you did." She kept moving.

_"You're never going to forgive me anyway."_

"You murdered my family. You stole my son from me. You tortured me and my friends, and killed hundreds of people I cared about. I hate you." The resentment gave her strength. It was a miracle she'd never earned her own dark cloak and matching helmet combo, not with her bitterness against this ghost fueling so much of her life.

_"Your biggest fear is that you're too much like me."_

"That's just fantastic," Leia said, and the ledge was two meters away. "Now the figment of my imagination is also a therapist." She let the pain focus her, in her flesh and in her heart. The sunlight warmed the very top of the canyon, and was gone. She'd be alone in the night soon. She pressed on.

_"Have you been to see someone lately?"_

"You're from my imagination reading my thoughts. You don't have to ask."

_"I'm making conversation."_

"Don't." Leia grunted as another step across jarred her hurt ankle. "And no. I haven't had time."

_"You should make the time. You're carrying a great deal of pain and resentment. It would do you good to talk with someone."_

Perhaps if she beat her skull against the cliffside for a while, she'd cause herself enough brain damage to stop the hallucination.

_"There's no reason to hurt yourself intentionally over me."_

"Shut up."

She could barely see the rock in front of her by the time her fingers grasped the lip of the ledge, and it took the last her her strength to pull herself up before collapsing in a fetal position on the rock. She'd rested on beds cushioned with the softest down, made up with sheets of gossamer silk. Not even in her tired state did the uneven stone feel as good, but it was pretty nice.

She woke a while later, still in the darkness. She pulled out her lantern and her stove, then set about tending to her injuries. The scrapes were bad. Her mouth had stopped bleeding and her teeth seemed to be in order. The sprained ankle was swollen inside her boot, which she knew better than to remove now. Above her, the top of the canyon was visible against the stars but she would do no more climbing tonight.

_"You might be high enough to get a signal now. You're past the worst of the interference."_

Leia had nothing to lose by trying. She sent out her distress call, and was dismayed as the signal died in front of her. She smacked the side with her fist, but the battery was dead.

She'd climbed for nothing. She was going to die here.

She rested against the hard rock wall, stones digging into her back, and pushed back her tears. Her water supply was limited. Crying, sweating, urinating, the latter of which was going to happen sooner rather than later, these would rob her of her water and soon her life.

"He's going to think I rejected the offer. He's going to think I rejected him. I won't be found for months or years, if ever."

She'd received the message with her private code. Ben wanted to meet with her alone. Leia had been sensible enough to tell the rest of Command. She wasn't stupid. This was a trap. But she was his mother, and if he called, she would come to see him. She'd scraped her knees climbing, and her mother had left a state engagement to treat and bandage and kiss her better. She had run headfirst into diplomatic walls in the Senate, and her father had dropped everything to listen to her complaints, and offer his advice. That's what parents did. They loved their children beyond all hope. Ben wanted to talk with Leia and she'd gone, and instead of meeting him she'd crashed here. She would never see him again.

_"He's at the rendezvous point now, waiting for you. He suspects you're not coming because you'll assume it's a trap."_

"Tell him I'd come if I could."

_"He can't hear me. He talks to me, but he never hears my reply. I'd tell him to give up this path. The power it promises is false, and the reward is nothingness. He doesn't listen."_

"He never did."

Leia rested and she considered her options. As she had none left, this did not take long. She'd scrimped on the painkillers. If she took them all at once, she'd go to sleep and not wake up. That would be far less painful than expiring of thirst or falling to her death on the canyon floor below her. The remote possibility of locating food or water at the top of her climb was extinguished by her conviction there would have been a trickle of water left at the bottom. Without a functioning transmitter, she had only the means to choose the path of her death.

The stove had a battery.

She tilted her head, looking at the faint glow. The power source was a radioactive isotope, not unlike the power source for some of the larger warcraft of the old wars, though much smaller in size. The night was cold. Leia pulled open the back panel of the stove anyway. The battery was the size of her little finger. By the light of her lantern, she opened the transmitter's back panel.

The dead battery was a different size.

It had been a stupid idea.

The blue glow was far too close to her. _"The contacts are similar. Look. You'd have to pull the wiring free and find a way to hold the new battery against the ends."_

She could. Leia prodded at the leads. The holder was made of a flimsy material which she snapped free with her fingers. She pressed the ends of the contacts against her stove battery. The transmitter lit up.

"The only sealant I have is the bacta tape."

_"I've made do with worse."_

She had none left on her roll, but with a lot of grunting, she pulled free the outside strip from the binding on her arm. She wrapped the battery against the leads. The transmitter stayed on.

"Mayday," Leia said into the mic. "Mayday." She repeated her call for help as the short night grew colder. Her blankets didn't help with the chill, not with her fingers numb and her body this battered. Even a rescue by the First Order would mean living longer than staying here, and she might see her son again before the end.

_"He's wondering where you are."_

"Angry I didn't fall into his trap? I'd have walked in happily, and he'd have turned me over to his master in a moment."

_"It's not a trap. He wants information from you, whatever you know about that girl. He's got quite the obsession brewing for her."_

Girl? "Rey. She went to find Luke."

_"She's found him."_

"Good. She can bring him home."

_"Luke doesn't want to come home."_

The sob hit her then, unexpected and unwanted. Luke had walked out on his own two feet. Leia had spent every day since hoping she could find him and convince him to come back. "I should have gone to find him instead. He would have listened to me." Also, she wouldn't be stuck here on this barren planet alone.

_"Moon."_

"Shut up!"

The ghost beside her was silent for a long time. _"Obi-wan should have told the two of you the truth about who you were. Everything would have been different."_

"You don't get to talk about mistakes Obi-wan made."

_"He and Yoda knew. Artoo knew. One of them should have told you."_

She'd wondered, alone in the long years after Luke and Han had both left. What if Obi-wan had shown Luke her cry for help, and told him she was his sister? Would he have believed the old man? Would he still have rescued her as she lay there, a condemned prisoner of this same ghost haunting her now, rushing into her cell to tell her he was her brother? The Luke she'd known back then was enough of a sweet boy that the answer was likely yes, but she'd only known the sweet boy. Of course she'd loved him, and so had Han, and however the three of them orbited each other, they'd always understood that this was where they all belonged. They'd held onto that and to each other even after Luke discovered the truth, after it was far too late to walk away whole. They'd held and loved until they had shattered apart, spinning away into separate wild directions.

Han had died without ever seeing Luke again. Leia was coming to accept that so would she.

"It doesn't matter now."

_"Leia...."_

"Did you name us?"

The ghost shook his head. _"We discussed names but never decided. Your mother chose them when you were born."_

"Good. I'd hate to think I've been carrying around something else of yours all this time." She closed her eyes.

_"Your injuries are worse than you think. If you fall asleep now, you will die before morning."_

Leia growled at the unwanted voice. "You're not really here, and if you were, you're the last person in the galaxy I'd trust for a medical diagnosis."

_"None of that changes the fact that you haven't eaten or had any water in far too long."_

She growled again, but her stomach had been reminded, and it wasn't as though she had anything better to do. She opened her meal bar and forced it down with a drink. She allowed herself one of the painkillers to help her rest.

_"You can't afford to sleep now."_

Leia ignored him, closing her eyes again. Out in the darkness at the edge of earshot, she heard noises. Perhaps this place wasn't as barren as she'd believed. Perhaps the scavengers waited for her at the top of this insurmountable hill, ready to gnaw her bones.

_"Tell me about your parents."_

Her eyes snapped open, the jolt enough to energize her limbs. "You don't get to talk about them, either."

_"You cared for them a great deal."_

The old bitterness filled her mouth and churned in her gut, crawling with sorrows that would never end. "You're right. I am never going to forgive you."

_"I know."_

Those two words drove another spike of anger into her soul. He'd stood there, uncaring, ripping Han away from her back on Bespin as she'd called out to the man she loved, using them both to lure the other man she loved into a vicious trap. He'd known. He had to have known. He'd tortured Han for hours. Leia had set aside her memories of her own horrific experiences when it had been her turn. And for what? Intelligence on the current whereabouts of the Rebellion? Strategic information on their long-term plans? No. Vader had hurt them and nearly killed Han because he'd known beyond doubt Luke would feel their pain and come for them.

_"Think how different things would have been had I discovered you instead of your brother."_

"You don't think I've had that nightmare over and over? If you'd tried to drag me to the Dark Side, you'd have succeeded." Since the moment Luke had confessed the truth to her, she'd understood how lucky they'd all been Vader had found Luke instead. Her sweet boy was too good in his soul to fall, too distant from his own petty jealousies and angers to use them for power. Leia knew her own mind well enough, and knew if she'd been taught to tap into that strength, she'd never have looked back. As it was, she could point to far too many times she'd survived solely because she was too furious with the Empire to die that day.

Of course Ben had fallen. He was just like her.

_"He doesn't have your conviction that everything you do is right. He doesn't have your belief that justice will ultimately prevail. He's afraid of everything, including his master. But yes, otherwise he's exactly like you. And you can find the means to work with that, my beautiful, brilliant daughter."_

Leia turned on him, lit with that same anger. "Don't you dare call me that!" Her shout echoed. "I am not yours!"

A light flashed across from her on the opposite cliffside. Not morning, surely, not even as fast as the night passed on this world.

"General?" The shout came from the top of the canyon. Another light joined the first. Spotlights. She'd been found.

Leia called, "Down here!"

The lights came closer and shone down directly from above her. Faces were impossible to make out. If she'd been found by the First Order, she'd be killed. No use worrying about it now.

"Where is your ship? Is Lieutenant Stence with you?"

"Down in the ravine. We crashed. Stence didn't make it." Even as she spoke, one of the lights moved away. She heard the distant sound of a hovercycle starting. "I can't climb up."

"That's all right, ma'am. We'll be down soon." There was a chuckle, filled with a dissipating stress. She didn't know the voice. "Good thing we heard you shout. We received your distress signal but couldn't find you."

She glanced at her transmitter. The light had gone out. She turned it over. The bacta tape had come loose from the battery sometime after she'd sent her call. If she had gone to sleep, if she hadn't been angry with the ghost haunting her on this empty planet, they would have passed her by in the brief night.

Leia tensed, waiting for his reprisal in her mind. She heard nothing except the approaching grumble of the hovercycle as it made its careful way over the edge and down the cliffside. They settled her into the transport while the hovercycle went back down to retrieve Stence's body. Leia felt warm for the first time in days, and the second painkiller they'd given her pushed away her aches into a dull, distant place. She was going back. She was going to live. She'd missed her rendezvous with her son, but she'd make the next one. Ben was just like her. She could use that to bring him home, too.

She watched the ground drop away as they lifted off, the desolate, harsh beauty lit by the sun's first rays over the lonely landscape. She couldn't make out the narrow canyon where she'd almost died, and as the nose of the ship turned, she knew she'd never see it again.

"Where are we?" she asked, watching as the ground fell away beneath them.

"Galata system," said the pilot. "We were passing close by when your signal came."

They lifted into space, the planet now a small ball of dull browns, with a few traces of green clinging to patches of ground. This world wasn't lifeless after all, not completely. As they ascended, a vicious red mass rose before them, a gas giant swirling with storms across its huge surface.

"That's Galata Three," said her other rescuer. "You crashed on its second moon."

Leia's head swam like the tormented surface of the gas giant, confused with medication and her extensive injuries. That was the only explanation she ever let herself believe when she heard, _"Told you,"_ from behind her left shoulder. By the time she turned her head, she saw nothing but the sad, white lump that was the sheet covering Stence's body.

"Shut up," Leia said. "I still hate you." She settled into her seat and closed her eyes and she ignored his quiet grumbling for the rest of the journey home.

end


End file.
